Amidst Change in HR Technology Market, Updated Guides Keep Buyers Informed

In 2015 – 2016, HR cloud technology vendors have continued to receive massive, increasing amounts of funding from venture capital investors—so much so that the media has dubbed it an on-going “love affair.” Though legacy HR systems like PeopleSoft are still fairly common, these investors are banking on a mass migration to the cloud—and in fact, Deloitte’s 2016 Global Human Capital Trends report estimates that over 40% of companies are already working to replace their on-premise software with cloud-based HR technology.

In order to address these changes in the marketplace, TrustRadius has compiled over 1,500 end-user ratings and reviews of 21 leading Core HR and Talent Management products. We’ve distilled the data into product profiles and TrustMaps that will allow buyers to effectively discover and compare the products that are best suited for their use case, based on feedback from their peers.

We’ve also interviewed industry experts, to provide some context for the user feedback around technology trends and best practices. The guides also include information from vendors about how they’re addressing user concerns, and what their product roadmaps look like for the future.

A few key trends from the guides:

• In the eyes of experts, talent development is the key to employee engagement, which has been a major challenge for HR practitioners. As such, it’s an area of innovation for vendors and practitioners, who are working on new, more continuous technology-enabled approaches to performance and learning management.
• Talent management continues to spread amongst the mid-market, and the Core HR market for SMBs emerges. In fact, it’s quite crowded, due largely to an influx of funding for startups. In this lower end of the market, pure-play software vendors compete against PEOs (HR outsourcing services) and online point solutions for payroll/benefits, which are very lightweight and inexpensive or even free. Some more robust SMB offerings also include talent management features, such as performance reviews.
• Companies are shifting towards a more integrated HR and talent stack, in an effort to manage the employee lifecycle more smoothly and use data more strategically. In response some vendors are taking the tact of end-to-end HCM offerings, while others are focused on opening up their APIs and/or creating pre-built connectors to other products. Experts see this opening up of the HR technology ecosystem as a win for buyers, who will have more flexibility to choose and integrate the best capabilities for their use case in different areas.
• HR analytics are becoming more timely, actionable, and focused on operational optimization. For example, predictive analytics around things like employee flight risk are now widespread among the leading vendors, who are working on when and where to most effectively surface that data for managers.

The guides are available to download for free here: 2016 Buyer’s Guide to Core HR Software; 2016 Buyer’s Guide to Talent Management Software.